(no subject)

[ladynox25]

An article on the recovery and analysis of the Genesis probe left me laughing at the following:

Some of the containers hold as many as 96 pieces of the wafers, which are composed of silicone, gold on sapphire and geranium.

Geranium? They were sending *flowers* into space? Or maybe they meant germanium?

Also, for eftychia, who said not too long ago:

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep I was wondering whether they could use ground-penetrating radar to get a better idea what a volcano (specifically Mt. St. Helen's) was doing. Since I hadn't heard of anyone doing that, my guess was that it only works through soil, not rock. Now that I'm up I can hit Google to find out.

And to which I replied:

Would you *really* want to volunteer to drag a GPR thingy across the top of a smoking volcano that might just erupt in a minute or two? Not to mention the earthquakes might shake your apparatus up a bit.

I do apologize, as it seems I was mistaken. According to this, they *did* use GPR on Mt. St. Helens, and they can now do it remotely, without risking volcanologists.

Finally, police are looking for the guy who shot up Siegfried & Roy's house September 21. Apparently, the suspect is a former NFL place-kicker. I just want to know, what did he have against Siegfried & Roy?

Comments

[thette.livejournal.com]

*ahem* I think you should have been referring to _GPR_ if you thought about radar; GPS is the positioning system, which is something entirely different. (Not that you can't use it as a complement, but it's not a radar device. Radio, yes. Radar, no.)

Very few GPR systems can be used from a distance. (My father has made antennas that can detect the snow thickness from a low height, but it would probably be very different for rocks, and you wouldn't want to fly directly above a volcano, anyway.)

[texas-tiger.livejournal.com]

Er, yes. I blame no coffee. Fixed.

[thette.livejournal.com]

But you fixed the wrong problem!

The article clearly says they used GPS, not GPR.

[texas-tiger.livejournal.com]

I think I'm getting confused between GPR (ground penetrating radar), GPS (ground penetrating sonar) and GPS (global positioning system).

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

In case anybody's wondering about this, GPS is used in vulcanology because it's an accurate way to measure changes in a volcano's shape (which can tell a lot about pressures inside, etc).